After I linked to a shockingly moronic post on David Klinghoffer’s blog at Beliefnet—gay marriage harms women because what straight guy can resist “smooth-skinned boys”—some Slog commenters made their way over to Kingdom of Priests, where they proceeded to comport themselves like true Slog commenters. Today Klinghoffer notes…
Oh, now I know where all the incredibly nasty and vulgar commenters came from who joined our discussion when I posted Joshua Berman’s reflection on the threat gay marriage would pose to women. It was linked by editor Dan Savage at The Stranger, one of our two local alternative papers here in the Seattle, on his blog.
The Stranger can be amusing but Savage himself is a shockingly vulgar writer, so much so that I won’t link you back to his link from this blog which, after all, should be readable by your whole family.
Speaking of families, I’ve heard Savage on the radio talking about his “marriage” to another man with whom he has adopted a son. Who knows what Savage is like as a father. Maybe he’s a model dad—as well as being a wonderful, faithful “husband.” Let’s stipulate that he is both. I do know, however, that I would never publish anything that I wasn’t comfortable with my kids reading. The idea of any father engaging in such public displays of vulgarity—well, it could hardly be a worse advertisement for the societal stamp of approval on homosexual activity that Savage himself ardently seeks.
First, allow me to link you back to my post linking Klinghoffer’s original post about how legal same-sex marriage would result in straight men giving up sex with women in favor of sex with boyish twinks: “Once You’ve Had Crack You Never Go Back.” There’s just a single profanity in my original post (“asshole”), you’ll note, which is pretty tame by Slog standards (can’t you say “asshole” on TV now?). And you can read the Slog-tainted comment thread at Kingdom of Priests here.
And second…. gee… it sure was nice of Klinghoffer—so very Christian of him—to refrain from putting the word “son” in scare quotes along with “marriage” and “husband” as he speculated about my family life. Klinghoffer is willing to concede that my son exists, unlike my marriage (legal in Canada and six other states) or my husband (who is not a figment of my imagination), and that’s better than nothing, I suppose. But you have to wonder about a guy who believes that no adult should write or publish a word that isn’t fit to be read by children. We all can’t write children’s books or Jeebus blogs. And David? I kind of doubt that whole families are gathering around computers at night to read your “insights.” Just sayin’ you could probably let the occasional profanity rip on the ol’ blog without corrupting minds any tinier than your own.
And finally: I’d like to welcome David Klinghoffer’s blog to Friends of Slog. Hopefully our commenters will be joining the discussion at Kingdom of Priests on a regular basis.
Mika! just saw your posts on the other site. 🙂 Thanks for keeping the conversation going. And I think you’re a bit more eloquent than me on several points.
But…but…he’s just so wrong. You are pretty likely to get an FCC fine if you say “asshole” on television, assuming someone goes running to mommy FCC after hearing it. You can say “ass”, but will pretty much be guaranteed to get into trouble for “asshole” unless you’re on pay cable.
Oh, yeah. And that dork is wrong about pretty much everything else he’s shooting his mouth off about, too. But I love that he used profanity himself and gave himself a free pass based on erroneous information. Because to guys like him, facts are things that prove his points and make him feel comfy, and anything else is just wrong wrong wrong and la la la, I can’t hear you. Maybe someday he’ll graduate from that third grade mentality, but I’m not holdin’ my breath.
You are spamming, Partly Cloudy
That’s genius! I can’t wait to go back and tell my most religious-wacko male relatives (I have a few) that they’re totally right to oppose gay marriage because It might turn THEM gay! I’m gonna get tons of mileage out of that one. Thanks, Klinghoffer!
And now David Klinghoffer is posting as follows: “What made it all worthwhile was a wonderfully telling comment from one earnest gay man, a Stranger reader who, bright guy though he seems to be, couldn’t see the distinction between what a person feels tugged to do and what he actually does — as if tugs and temptations, which we all have, of different kinds and to various degrees, were there not to be transcended but to be accommodated and worked into one’s “lifestyle.” For him, as for many people today, homosexuality means both the tug and therefore automatically, because a person really has no choice in the matter of whether he follows his inclination or not, the activity as well. My assumption to the contrary he found “a bit disconcerting.”
How incredibly revealing of the sick times we live in, when belief in free will is largely rejected as a myth from the Iron Age. To one extent or another, we are all, myself included, infected by the sickness that causes us to doubt that we can tell ourselves: no. Among sins, homosexual activity is far from unique but it does stand out as a leading indicator of the Zeitgeist.”
At least Klinghoffer is admitting that he thinks homosexual activity is a sin.
Hey Theo,
He gets points for honesty. He appears to want to sentence those who are homosexual to either a celibate and lonely life, or an uncelibate reality with a member of the opposite sex. I wonder if the table was turned, and his heterosexuality was viewed as the “sin”, how he’d feel?
Hi Kim:
Yes – he is honest in that post. But arguing against gay marriage on the basis that it harms straight women seems disengenuous at the very least. He did not mention that homosexual activity is a sin in his first post (I don’t know enough about him to ascertain whether he always says so, though.) And I very much doubt that he’d give up sex if my goddess demanded it of him. But, since he is so obsessed with cock, he is giving up gay sex in my opinion. 🙂
And I find Klinghoffer dishonest in one respect: he never answers a good point made by his critics.
Hi Theo,
I just read your question to him. I posted my own, and I asked him about the turned table. We shall see if he responds.
Kim:
He hasn’t responded to any questions that challenged him on the two posts I have read. I hope you are keeping well and healing nicely. Cheers!.
Kim:
As you know your Bible and translations thereof really , really well, I am going to copy and save your post (on Klinghoffer’s blog) as fodder for any future arguments I have with devout Christians re homosexuality. Thanks for the ammunition!
Hey Theo:
I tend to study from books, but here is an web site that I find helpful (I learned about it form Uriel-238), and that I often quote from: http://www.religioustolerance.org You’ll fine that they offer better information than I ever could.
Well, internet lynch mobs tend not to receive a warm reception. You shouldn’t be too surprised, Dan.
@53 / kathy – yes, asshole (and bitch, and cockmaster, and suck dick, and anything other than SHIT and FUCK) is said on cable (pay cable? I assume all cable is pay, otherwise comcast wouldn’t have the money to air comcastic commercials on cable channels for its own damn service), even the basic channels and even before midnight *gasp*.
Has been the case for, oh, ten years at least? See: Eric Cartman.
See also: schitty pork. schitty wok.
Regardless… profanity, including G. Carlin’s seven naughty words (and all those invented since), is merely part of american language at this point. The internet grants the same rights as brick and mortar america: i.e. teh internet is a free speech zone.
Profanity isn’t really profane any more, and it was never one of the ten commandments – they is just “Words, words, words”, so chill, Polonius.
…wasn’t it Heinlein who said once, that it’s absurd to insist grown men subsist on skim milk because babies can’t digest steak?
This dipshit needs to learn that different people read different things, and that’s fine.
If Dan’s kid wants to read his column, there’s nothing stopping him. He’s literate at this point. But, of course, he’s unlikely to be interested yet, and more likely to be grossed out. Hell, in general, even when he starts being interested in that whole sex/girls/relationships thing, he’ll still probably think “ew, stuff my dad thinks about sex. Do not want.” And, of course, if he does start to read, and finds something he dislikes, he can put it down.
Assholes like the columnist here never seem to realize that no outside party needs to dictate what a person can and cannot read — because we’re fully capable of deciding that ourselves and don’t need to be protected.
I read David’s blog story and all of the resulting comments left by bloggers and was surprised to see, not a single comment was left that favored David’s position on this story.
If Dan did anything, it was to increase David’s readership, because apparently, nobody reads David’s blogs. Until now, that is.
David should send Dan a nice “Thank You” gift for giving him some much needed readership.
This guy does not argue like a Jew. Even the most traditional, conservative Jews do not dismiss science, and they certainly don’t dismiss the Talmud. I think Klinghoffer has been in bed with the fundie Evangelicals at his anti-Darwin institute for too long. A self-hating gay, maybe, but a self-hating Jew for sure.
lymerae,
I read your wonderful, and well thought out post. It doesn’t seem he is going to answer either of us.
@ 68 lymerae: you haven’t heard of Ben Shapiro, then. And be glad: he’s like a Jewish Ann Coulter, sans testicles.
Interesting thing about this post and the one about Rev. Hutch is that neither one of them come from positions of power and control any more. Millions of lesbian and gay citizens live our lives out in the open. Thousands of us are legally marrried. We adopt children. We have huge parades and laws that protect our rights. We have a President who invites openly homosexual people to the White House to mark the anniversary of the birth of our movement while anti gay religious leaders are on the defensive. Meanwhile polls show an ever increasing public acceptance of us and our rights.
Indeed this is the beginning of the post Christian era in America.
@66 : Great quote. And it is, indeed, Heinlein, who was (obviously) talking about censorshit/ship in general. “”The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men
live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.” Although Carlin does the best job of deconstructing censorship-lovers’ bullshit imho.
For a second when I saw this on Most Commented … I thought it was about Eyman’s initiative to turn WA into the same basket case CA is.
But then I read it and realized it wasn’t.
Darn.